This is the first installment of two videos that are designed to show you how to make an awesome static home page using WordPress and Thesis. This video will show you how to use only WordPress with a dash of Thesis to create a very simple, yet effective, static homepage. This is useful for those of you who are not primarily bloggers and desire to, perhaps, showcase a product or service. In essence, you are simply creating a page in WordPress, using Thesis to determine the text of the home nav menu item, and moving the blog to another part of your site.
It is important to note that although the nav menu will say “Home” for the page you choose as the static homepage, the actual page name is determined by what you call it in WordPress.
Again, this is a very simple technique for those of you wishing to simply make a static homepage. This is also the first step to creating a custom page template. So, if you are looking to do more custom work, you will still need to watch this video first.
Remember to Get Thesis and take your blogging to a new level of efficiency and professionalism.
Send your questions to: thesistutor [at] gmail [dot] com
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Hey Matt! Thanks for the tutorial. It was clear and professional. Nice Job!
Thank you very much for you videos, after watching just two of them its helped me a ton!
Just wanted to say I have learned a lot from the videos you post. I really appreciate the information. I am comfortable with computers but css and php takes a little getting used too
Two things.
1) I get no sound on this video. I do on all the others so not sure what is happening. I am watching it in Firefox if that makes any difference.
2) I notice you don’t have Openhooks installed. For new people I think it makes a huge difference in being able to find where things go. Your lesson on moving the nav menu involved copying your one line of code and pasting it in one box on open hooks.
Great blog. keep up the great work.
LOL when I posted the comment the page reloaded and now the video is playing with sound. I had reloaded it a couple of times and still no sound.
Got to love computers.
Your a lifesaver thanks!
Awesome video, but it cuts out about 2/3rds of the way through. Thanks for the hard work man.
Scratch that just needed to refresh the page, sorry
Matt, have you ever seen anyone build a complete static website from thesis? Something like 100+ pages with possibly a blog attached?
Ryan
@Ryan
Have I seen it? I don’t think I have. But it would be very easy to accomplish, unless you wanted multiple custom page templates. In that case, it would be very hard
Matt,
Great job on your demo. It was very well done. Easy to follow, straight to the point, good audio and a nice clear voice and slideshow for your video. I am a very newbie to wordpress, thesis and css code. Because of you and a host of other Thesis fans, we are able to getting our feet wet in the web dev part of the internet. The site is coming along and it should be launched just in time for St Valentines day, a perfect time to launch a wedding ceremony site.
Hi & thanks for the video!
I too am looking to create a static website with the possibility of a future blog. I will only have 6-10 pages so Thesis seems as though it may work. One thing that you wrote concerned me though…
“It is important to note that although the nav menu will say “Home” for the page you choose as the static homepage, the actual page name is determined by what you call it in Wordpress.”
Are you saying that the Home page url would not be mydomain.com but rather mydomain.com/whatever?
I will also need a custom header. Would you happen to have a video about that too?
Thanks
@Alan
I suppose it will technically exist as both.
Hi Matt. As a complete beginner, I have to say that there seems to be virtually nothing ‘out there’ that gives a good basic overview of what Thesis is all about. On one of the forums someone suggested the development of a Wiki, which I’m sure would be helpful to relatively non-technical users like me. That’s how I found your site. Your videos are really clear and ‘un-threatening’ and I would like to thank you for all your time and effort in putting them together.
Like Ryan, I want to put together a content heavy site involving at least 100 pages. Leaving aside for the moment the (probably rather major) question of custom templates, is there any limit to the number of pages Thesis can handle, or the number of, say grandchild pages I could link to a child page (does that make sense?!). It’s all worrisome stuff when you’ve no idea what you’re doing!
@Susannah
There was a stress test recently done on Thesis and it handled 10,000 page AND 10,000 blog posts without issue. I’m sure there is a theoretical limit as to what Thesis can handle, but I’d be willing to bet WordPress breaks down way sooner. As far you are concerned, Thesis can handle anything you throw at it. As far as I know, there is no limit to child pages. The only time I would be worried is if you start to approach the 1,000,000 posts + pages mark…and then I would only worry because you’d have spent every waking second online
Hey,
When using a page as homepage, there won’t be any H1 tag on the page which is bad for SEO. Any idea how I can add an H1 tag? The page title acts as an H2 tag but I want it to be H1!
Thanks,
Josh
There is always an <h1> tag. It is the site tagline. You can put a new <h1> in via a hook, but you’ll have to rebuild the header.
Nope, I can’t see an H1 tag. There’s only an H2 with the Page’s Title!
I am using an image as header and I have also unchecked “Show site name in header” and “Show site tagline in header” from the thesis site options. Is this why there’s no H1 tag? Is there a way around this?
Thanks,
Josh
Hey Josh did you sort this I am having the exact same problem?
Hi Matt,
Thanks for very informative and simple guide. I am just playing around with my new WP/Thesis installation trying to convert a DW buildt site onto the wp/thesis platform. Using it for a static site with quite a few pages containing articles/products and background info I just wonder if there are limitations in this setup when it comes to structuring the different subjects etc. I must say I am a newbie at this. So far I find wp/thesis sooo easy when it comes to update/SEO and managing. Its just the organizing of quite a bit of articles I get confuesed in. The nav bar fills up quite fast..
Any tips?
Matt
thanks for your guide, it is quite nice. I have just tried it on thesis 1.8 and it still leaves the comments on the static page. Do you know how to go about removing it?
thanks in advance
M.
Hi Matt.
What software do you use to record the screen of your tutorial?
Thanks
Terje
I think matt using Camtasia
sorry for my english fist!
I have a big problem.
I gonna explain in your example what i whant.
I have in the home page “the sales page” a dropdown menu and the pages not appear.
I have dropdown menu in “the sales page” and they don’t appear. please
Great video,..Thanks Matt…
But I have one question..Now the new Static page has option to add Meta Description also thesis gives you the same option for homepage..where to add them in the static page area once we create this “front page”, or from thesis “Home Page SEO” ..
Please do advice..
and thank you again
I feel like I’m stuck in mud. Help! Where do I learn the A, B, C’s of how to create a website with Thesis. I’m seriously unable to begin.
Hi,
I don’t have those options under Settings —-> Reading. Is this because I have the latest version of WP and Thesis or it’s due to something else?
Regards,
Marcus
THANK YOU! This was perfect – exactly what I needed and it works beautifully.